Why Your Digital Investments Aren’t Creating Value

Companies are investing heavily in digital analytics hubs with AI and gen AI capabilities, enterprise CRM systems and marketing technology platforms. Nowhere is this more concentrated than in commercial functions, where growth and customer impact live.

Yet, a growing unease permeates the C-suite. In a 2025 PwC survey, 56 percent of CEOs said their companies were not yet seeing financial returns from AI investments. We hear similar concerns from the executives we work with. While confidence in digital’s potential remains high, commercial teams struggle to translate that promise into tangible business results.

In a 2026 ZS survey of U.S. pharmaceutical chief digital and information officers (CDIOs), fewer than half reported measurable value from commercial AI efforts, citing fragmented data, unclear ownership and limited change management as persistent barriers. Further, leaders on ZS’s CIO Advisory Council say they struggle to tie substantial CRM transformation investments to revenue gains. Repeatedly, executives tell us that digital initiatives fall short of expectations: improving execution but not strategy, increasing efficiency but without freeing capacity for higher-value work, showing strong adoption but limited business impact and creating disconnected solutions that do not fit with existing workflows. Despite deploying the latest systems, companies are realizing only a fraction of the benefit for which they hoped.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Harvard Business Review.